How Many Forms Does Your Health System Have Outside the EHR?

Most health systems do not know how many forms they manage outside the EHR.

Health Information Management (HIM) may know how many forms it controls. Registration may know how many documents it uses. Those counts rarely include every departmental form, locally saved PDF, outdated copy or paper packet still in circulation.

Forms accumulate one at a time. A department creates a document to support a workflow that was not addressed during the original EHR implementation or cannot be accommodated by available functionality. Another team modifies it for its facility. Before long, several versions exist, and no one is certain which one is current.

Across a health system, these workarounds create what we call the forms gap. The first step in closing it is building a healthcare forms inventory that shows what the organization actually uses.

At Interlace Health, we see that the easiest forms to count are usually the ones someone officially owns. The harder ones are local variations and manual workflows that have become part of daily operations.

Follow the work to find the forms

Forms outside the EHR rarely live in one place or fall under one owner.

The best way to find these forms is to understand what staff actually use.

Start with the departments most likely to create, print, store or scan documents. Include representatives from different facilities when workflows vary by location.

Ask a registration manager to walk through patient intake from beginning to end. Note every document staff download, print, email, complete, scan or save outside the EHR.

Repeat the exercise with a nursing unit and one or two specialty departments. These conversations often uncover forms that never appear on official inventories because staff see them as part of the routine.

Build one shared healthcare forms inventory

Record each form in one place using consistent information:

• Name, purpose and owner
• Department and storage location
• Revision and approval dates
• Frequency of use
• Regulatory requirements
• Manual data-entry requirements
• How the completed form returns to the EHR

Record variations separately at first. If three hospitals use documents called “Patient Financial Agreement,” list all three until the organization determines whether the differences are necessary.

Comparing the language, approval dates, owners and workflows may show that each hospital needs its own version. It may also reveal that teams have maintained duplicate forms for years.

The goal is not simply to count documents. It is to understand what the organization uses, who controls it and where unnecessary complexity has developed.

Identify workflow gaps and risks

Knowing which forms exist is only part of the inventory. Understanding how they move through the workflow can reveal where manual steps create unnecessary work and risk.

Select several high-use forms and follow each from beginning to end. Look at where staff find the form, how patient information is added, who completes it and how it returns to the patient record.

For example, a registrar may download a PDF and re-enter information already stored in the EHR. After the patient signs it, another employee may scan and index the completed document. Each manual step adds work and creates another opportunity to use the wrong version, enter incorrect information or lose the form.

Capturing these workflow details in the inventory helps identify forms that may be electronically stored but still rely on disconnected, manual processes. Those findings can help determine which workflows should be addressed first.

Use the inventory to set priorities

Once the inventory reveals what forms are in use and where gaps exist, use those findings to determine what needs attention first. Eliminate outdated or duplicate forms before investing resources in digitization, and prioritize forms with governance or workflow concerns, particularly those tied to patient safety, compliance, revenue or high-volume processes.

The result is a clearer roadmap for what to eliminate, consolidate, standardize, govern or digitize.

Turn the inventory into action

A healthcare forms inventory gives HIM, IT and operational leaders a shared view of what remains outside the EHR. It shows where risk exists, where staff time is being lost and which workflows should be addressed first.

Once that picture is clear, Interlace Forms Management can help bring the forms an organization still needs into a centralized, governed environment connected to the EHR.

Building the inventory makes the forms gap visible. The next step is understanding why these documents and manual workflows continue to persist.

 

Continue the Closing the Forms Gap series:
Why Healthcare Forms Management Gaps Persist After EHR Go-Live (Blog 2)